on 1994 players’ strike, 210, 215, 239
on 1994 season, 190, 239
on 1995 season aftermath, 275
1996 World Series, 304
on his father, 46, 60, 304, 311
on Michael, 65
role in Yankees organization, 54, 190, 308
on Showalter, 275
on Yankees renaissance, 308
Steinbrenner, Hank, 19–20, 54, 103
Steinbrenner, Henry, 45–46
Steinbrenner, Jessica, 114, 144
Steinbrenner, Joan, 31, 64
Steinbrenner, Rita, 89
Steinbrenner (Madden), 144
Sterling, John, 298
Stewart, Dave, 115
Strange, Doug, 264–65
Strat-O-Matic Baseball (board game), 67–68
Strawberry, Darryl, 250, 298
Sussman, David, 254, 264, 272–73, 275
Sykes, Bob, 34
T
Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 254, 276
Tampa Yankees, 70–71, 126, 194, 196–97
Tartabull, Danny
1992 season, 111
1993 season, 135, 158, 172
1994 season, 201–2, 205
1995 season, 219
expansion draft and, 138
on Seinfeld, 159
Taylor, Bettie, 93, 95, 177, 179
Taylor, Brenden, 175–76
Taylor, Brien
1991 amateur player draft, 93–94
1992 season, 124–25, 128
1993 season, 148–49, 153
1994 season, 153, 177
1995 season, 177–78
1996 season, 178
1997 season, 178–79
1998 season, 179
1999 season, 179
background, 93
Baseball America rank, 95, 128
drafted by Yankees, 94
fight defending his brother, 175–77
off-season instructional camp and, 153, 173–74
personal character, 174
pitching skills, 93–94, 153
popularity, 124–25, 153
post-baseball life, 179–80
salary, 95
shoulder injury, 175–79, 217
signing with Yankees, 94–95
Taylor, Wade, 89
team owners. See owners
Texas Rangers
1973 amateur player draft, 94
1992 season, 119
1993 season, 170
1994 season, 200, 205, 211
1995 season, 245
1996 season playoffs, 296, 297
González’s career, 82
Hawkins as pitching coach, 42
interest in Bernie Williams, 82, 83
Rader as manager, 102
Stanley’s career, 113
Thomas, Frank, 200
Thome, Jim, 167–68, 296
Today (TV show), 147
Tolleson, Wayne, 78
Tommy John surgery, 125
Toronto Blue Jays
1991 season, 96
1991 trade talks, 88
1992 season, 29, 119, 128
1992 World Series, 29, 133, 142, 245
1993 season, 160, 163, 167, 170, 171, 173
1993 World Series, 173
1994 season, 205
1995 season, 213, 243, 255–56
Cone trade, 243–45
Key’s career, 142
Torre, Joe
1996 season, 286, 288–90, 293–94
1996 World Series, 299, 303, 304
background, 290
Hall of Fame induction, 309
managerial record, 281
personal character, 290
role in Yankees renaissance, 308–10
as Yankees manager, 280–81, 283
Trump, Donald, 12
Tschida, Tim, 225
Tuck, Gary, 192
U
umpires’ strike (1995), 219
uniforms, 31, 121
United States Olympic Committee, 53
University of Maine, 32–33
V
Valentine, Bobby, 125
Van Poppel, Todd, 95, 201
Vedder, Eddie, 242
Velarde, Randy, 168, 203, 223, 266, 267, 283
Ventura, Robin, 40–41
Vincent, Francis T., Jr., “Fay”
background, 45
career, 44
relationship with Steinbrenner, 44, 46–47
resignation from commissioner position, 133
Steinbrenner’s banishment, 51–55, 57, 89, 114–15, 140–41
Steinbrenner-Spira investigation, 16, 36–37, 47–55, 57
Steinbrenner’s reinstatement, xii, 114–15, 130–31
at Williams College, 44, 45
Vincent, Francis T., Sr., “Fay,” 45
W
Waco, Texas, 148
Walker, Jerry, 235–36
Wallace, B. J., 118
Wallace, Mike, 124
Washington, Claudell, 29, 78
Watson, Bob, 3, 4, 274, 283, 288
Wells, David, 233–34, 291
West Haven Yankees, 23
Wetteland, John
1995 season, 215–16, 219, 227, 240, 246, 251
1995 season playoffs, 258, 261, 291
1996 season, 290–93
1996 season playoffs, 298
1996 World Series, 300–302
facial hair, 227
on Showalter, 291
WFAN, 148, 275
Wickman, Bob
1992 season, 111–12, 128, 133
1993 season, 158, 162, 169, 173
1994 season, 187
1995 season playoffs, 262
1996 season, 291, 292–93
Baseball America rank, 128
career saves, 289
as expansion draft untouchable player, 138
in trade talks, 288
Wilhelm, Hoyt, 70–71
Williams, Bernabe Figueroa “Bernie”
1987 season, 80–81, 83–84
1990 season, 79, 84, 86
1991 season, 88, 89, 114
1992 season, 114, 128, 132
1993 season, 137–38, 149, 156, 158, 161, 168, 170, 172
1994 season, 183, 200, 201–2
on 1994 strike, 209
1995 season, 219, 223, 254, 255
1995 season playoffs, 260, 265–67
1996 season, 289, 292
1996 season playoffs, 297–98
1996 World Series, 299–300, 302, 303, 305
background, 80, 81
Baseball America rank, 87, 128
“Bernie being Bernie,” 157, 158, 300
career home runs, 298
as expansion draft untouchable player, 138
Hall’s hazing of, 89, 114
hidden by Yankees, 80, 82–83, 297
learning timetable, 132–33, 137
on Mattingly, 209
Michael’s funeral, 311
minor league career, 80–81, 83–84, 86, 100
personal character, 81, 82, 156–57
scouted by Yankees, 81–82
signing with Yankees, 83
switch-hitting, 83–84
on Taylor, 149
in trade talks, 85, 86, 88, 114, 161
on Yankee Way, 292
Williams, Gerald
1987 season, 80–81, 85
1988 season, 85–86
1990 season, 79, 86
1991 season, 88
1992 season, 128, 132
1993 season, 135, 158, 172
1995 season, 224, 254
1995 season playoffs, 267
1996 season, 289, 293
Baseball America rank, 87, 128
batting grip, 80, 85
drafted by Yankees, 80
as expansion draft untouchable player, 138
family background, 85
at Grambling State University, 80, 85
“Ice” nickname, 81
minor league career, 80–81, 85–86, 100
persona
l character, 81
in trade talks, 85, 86, 88
Williams, Matt, 205, 211
Williams, Ted, 211
Williams College, 44, 45–46
Wilson, Ron, 176
Wilson, Willie, 115
Winfield, Dave
1981 season, 7
1981 World Series, 13
1989 season, 10, 17
1990 season, 17, 29
1992 season, 29, 128
1992 World Series, 29
back surgery, 17
career longevity, 29
charitable foundation, 13–15, 48, 50
contract, 13–14
Henderson and, 18
respect for, 15
Spira and, 15, 16, 47–48, 89
Steinbrenner’s war with, 13–15, 47–48, 50
traded to California Angels, 29–30
winter meetings (1992), 139–41
Witt, Mike, 29, 38
Wohlers, Mark, 300
World Series. See also specific players and teams
1994 cancellation, xii–xiii, 203–4, 208–10
largest comeback, 300
World Trade Center bombing (1993), 148
Worthington, Craig, 88
WPIX, 171
Wurth, Leon, 75, 91–92
Y
Yankee Stadium
Monument Park, 245
New Jersey talks, 12–13, 163, 189
new stadium funding, 190
new stadium opening, 308
New York City talks, 12, 189–90, 252
as outdated, xii, 12
Showalter’s upgrades, 109, 145–46
“the Yankee Way,” 121–23, 151, 192–93, 200, 254, 292
Z
Zimmer, Don, 293
Zomer, Don, 72
1
* * *
“BLESS ME, FATHER, for I have sinned,” Billy Martin said.
He was in second grade.
Billy did this every Friday in 1936, entering the confessional of St. Ambrose Church to sit before the same priest, Father Dennis Moore. Like most second-graders, Billy did not actually have that many wrong deeds to tell Father Moore about. To what could he possibly confess?
Failing to honor his mother and father? Billy did not talk back to his parents. For one, he did not know his father, who left his mother when Billy was an infant. And he did not dare cross his mother, who ruled her household with an iron fist—a representation that was more than figurative. Jenny Martin knew how to throw a punch. Everyone in the family had seen with their own eyes her prowess in a fistfight, with women, and men.
Would little Billy confess to stealing?
In the gritty, crowded, downtrodden streets of West Berkeley where Billy lived, there was almost nothing to steal. California in the Great Depression was indeed a Garden of Eden, “a paradise to live in or see,” as Woody Guthrie sang in a ballad of the era, but no one would ever sing the praises of Billy’s neighborhood. He lived in one of the hundreds of tiny homes crammed against the East Bay docks across from burgeoning San Francisco. The tightly spaced West Berkeley houses were scruffy, set back just ten feet from busy, unkempt streets. They were homes without lawns and with tattered backyard fences. Factories and fish-canning plants towered over the neighborhood and seeded the sky with a smoky haze. The smell of the processed seafood filled the streets.
Two miles east of the water, the verdant hills of greater Berkeley climbed, a setting dotted with two-story middle-class homes and princely estates belonging to the administrators, professors, and staff from the nearby University of California at Berkeley. The roads in those shady hills were lined with flourishing fruit trees, graceful sequoias, and ponderosa pines. These were homes spread across spacious lots, leaving room for front and back yards and a driveway for the family car. There was a steady breeze off the water, and except when it was foggy, their view was San Francisco and the shimmering distant harbor—so long as they did not look down at the roughly square mile of West Berkeley dreariness below them.
No, Billy Martin didn’t steal. Only if you count some of the cooked crabs kitchen workers left to cool behind Spenger’s Fish Grotto, the roomy seafood restaurant near the docks. But that truly was not stealing. The Spenger’s workers, who had walked the few blocks from their West Berkeley homes, left the crabs out on purpose, knowing it was a furtive way to help feed the neighborhood.
What else could Billy confess to? Cursing? Taking the Lord’s name in vain?
His mother, who, unlike her five children, did not go to confession, had that commandment cornered, splicing profanities into virtually every sentence.
“Swearing was like breathing to my mother,” said Billy’s sister Pat Irvine. “She didn’t leave room for anybody else to swear. And if one of us swore, we’d get the back of her hand across our face anyway.
“So we did not swear.”
What else for Billy to confess then?
There was nothing of note, and in the dark of the confessional, Billy would instead strike up a conversation with Father Moore. He was never shy, always at ease with adults even as an eight-year-old. He had a crooked mouth and bad teeth, but he flashed his smile easily, and Father Moore, like others in the neighborhood, enjoyed being around the little boy who lived at 1632 7th Street, next to the house his grandmother moved to near the turn of the century. Billy most often regaled the priest with tales of the games he played at Kenney Park, just ten blocks away. There was basketball, swimming, diving, football, boxing, table tennis, and, of course, Billy’s favorite, baseball. Father Moore, seated deep in a quiet corner of St. Ambrose’s white concrete cathedral, heard about them all.
And when Billy was done talking about sports, the priest would ask about school and Billy’s friends. And only then would Billy talk about being embarrassed to wear the same clothes to school when some classmates clearly had a closetful of choices. He talked about being ridiculed for his overly large nose and jug ears, knowing that other kids called him “Pinocchio” behind his back. They made fun of his dungarees, which were frequently marked with grass stains and dirt—the evidence of his nonstop play at Kenney Park. But he wore them every day anyway. They were the only pants he had that fit.
While there was always food on the table at home, Billy said he knew his stepfather, Jack Downey, had to work two or three jobs to produce enough money for a household of six and he worried for him. There never seemed to be enough money to go around in a neighborhood where few of the adults had gone to school past eighth grade.
His mother had no car and had to walk everywhere, and Billy said he wanted a car. In fact, he wanted a big car someday, like the ones he had seen in the Berkeley hills. The kids from the crowded, flat, and uninspiring streets of West Berkeley called the well-dressed people they saw striding up and around the hills “the Goats,” a term still uttered in West Berkeley today and still delivered with a familiar disdain.
Billy wanted a car like the Goats had. And he wanted their clothes. And he wanted the money to go to the movies every day of the week if he chose. And he wanted his own bedroom, even if he did not mind sleeping with his aging grandmother, who had helped raise him since birth.
But as Father Moore related in a newspaper interview nearly twenty years later, “Life had already made Billy most vulnerable.” And that unnerved the priest.
“There was an insecurity, a lot of the kids from West Berkeley had it,” Moore said of Billy. “It’s the worry that you might some day have nothing. It was the idea, a constant fear, that it could all be taken away at any moment.”
But Father Moore also said that little Billy Martin had a plan. He knew the only way to get all the things he wanted was to work his way out of grimy West Berkeley. And at eight years old, Billy already knew that his way out was going to be baseball.
The greatest baseball team in the world in 1936 was the New York Yankees, the team of Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Tony Lazzeri, and Red Ruffing. Beginning in 1936, the Yankees won six of the next eight World Series and were r
unners-up in a seventh. It was a team that was a continent and seemingly a civilization away from 7th Street’s foundationless, rough-hewn houses, but Billy told anyone who would listen that he was going to be a New York Yankee.
Chumps to Champs Page 44
